Ulysses - Gabler Edition [249]
BLOOM
(humbly kisses her long hair) Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I was glad to look on you, to praise you, a thing of beauty, almost to pray.
THE NYMPH
During dark nights I heard your praise.
BLOOM
(quickly) Yes, yes. You mean that I .... Sleep reveals the worst side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. I know I fell out of bed or rather was pushed. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. For the rest there is that English invention, pamphlet of which I received some days ago, incorrectly addressed. It claims to afford a noiseless, inoffensive vent. (he sighs) ’Twas ever thus. Frailty, thy name is marriage.
THE NYMPH
(her fingers in her ears) And words. They are not in my dictionary.
BLOOM
You understood them?
THE YEWS
Ssh!
THE NYMPH
(covers her face with her hands) What have I not seen in that chamber? What must my eyes look down on?
BLOOM
(apologetically) I know. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up with care. The quoits are loose. From Gibraltar by long sea long ago.
THE NYMPH
(bends her head) Worse, worse!
BLOOM
(reflects precautiously) That antiquated commode. It wasn’t her weight. She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds after weaning. It was a crack and want of glue. Eh? And that absurd orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle.
(The sound of a waterfall is heard in bright cascade.)
THE WATERFALL
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS
(mingling their boughs) Listen. Whisper. She is right, our sister. We grew by Poulaphouca waterfall. We gave shade on languorous summer days.
JOHN WYSE NOLAN
(in the background, in Irish National Forester’s uniform, doffs his plumed hat) Prosper! Give shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland!
THE YEWS
(murmuring) Who came to Poulaphouca with the High School excursion? Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade?
BLOOM
(scared) High School of Poula? Mnemo? Not in full possession of faculties. Concussion. Run over by tram.
THE ECHO
Sham!
BLOOM
(pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in nondescript juvenile grey and black striped suit, too small for him, white tennis shoes, bordered stockings with turnover tops and a red schoolcap with badge) I was in my teens, a growing boy. A little then sufficed, a jolting car, the mingling odours of the ladies’ cloakroom and lavatory, the throng penned tight on the old Royal stairs (for they love crushes, instinct of the herd, and the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice), even a pricelist of their hosiery. And then the heat. There were sunspots that summer. End of school. And tipsycake. Halcyon days.
(Halcyon Days, High School boys in blue and white football jerseys and shorts, Master Donald Turnbull, Master Abraham Chatterton, Master Owen Goldberg, Master Jack Meredith, Master Percy Apjohn, stand in a clearing of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom.)
THE HALCYON DAYS
Mackerel! Live us again. Hurray! (they cheer)
BLOOM
(hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with spent snowballs, struggles to rise) Again! I feel sixteen! What a lark! Let’s ring all the bells in Montague street. (he cheers feebly) Hurray for the High School!
THE ECHO
Fool!
THE YEWS
(rustling) She is right, our sister. Whisper. (Whispered kisses are heard in all the wood. Faces of hamadryads peep out from the boles and among the leaves and break, blossoming into bloom.) Who profaned our silent shade?
THE NYMPH
(coyly, through parting fingers) There? In the open air?
THE YEWS
(sweeping downward) Sister, yes. And on our virgin sward.
THE WATERFALL
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.
THE NYMPH
(with wide fingers) O, infamy!
BLOOM
I was precocious. Youth. The fauna. I sacrificed to the god of the forest. The flowers that bloom in the spring. It was pairing time. Capillary attraction is a natural phenomenon. Lotty Clarke, flaxenhaired, I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa’s operaglasses: The wanton ate grass wildly. She rolled downhill at Rialto bridge to tempt me with her flow of animal spirits. She climbed their crooked tree and I. A saint couldn